Before we left for our first retirement trip to the PopUp Business School at Mr. Money Mustache’s Headquarters in Longmont, I shared that we would be trying to do some travel hacking to save money. I also decided to keep track of our expenses for the first time on a trip! I estimated how much we thought we’d spend during the 16 days and today I’ll share how close those estimates were. I’ll show you where we were frugal and where we set our Mustachian ways aside!

Parking our car at an airport hotel cost $4/day. After adding tax and driver tips, the total was $79.50. Flights on Southwest with our Companion Pass cost $22.40 (taxes/fees) and 35,236 UR points. Car (mini-van) Rental in Denver used 50,215 UR points and gas for the mini-van cost a total of $252.72 (*We drove almost 1700 miles during our time in Colorado!)

Results – We spent $105.62 more than we anticipated. But we really had no idea where we were going to end up traveling when we weren’t in Longmont. We made a huge loop down to Great Sand Dunes National Park the first weekend we were there. And after the PopUp Business School was over, we spent four more days traveling all through Rocky Mountain National Park. We also went to Steamboat Springs before we headed back to Denver.

With all of the cool things we did during our trip, we were fine with spending more to get around the great state of Colorado!

Lodging

Estimate – $450 (mostly tent camping, maybe a small cabin for a few nights, hotels for a night or two)

We loved the tent camping we did in Colorado! And our plan to bring all of our gear in suitcases on Southwest worked fine. We had everything we needed to be (mostly) comfortable. The first four nights in Lyons, CO cost $96 (we ended up having to pay for showers there so it was closer to $25/night not $20.) I just realized that the second week (3 nights) should have been discounted for off-season (from what I read online), but we didn’t get a discount – and that was fine. It was a great camping area! For three nights during Week 2, the cost was $72. The first weekend away from Longmont, we camped at two KOA’s which cost a total of $72.76. Total camping costs – $240.76.

We chose to use an AirBNB in Longmont for Sunday and Monday night (starting Week #2 of PopUp) because we got back into town late on Sunday and had plans to go to the Denver Bronco’s Monday night football game. The cost for the AirBNB was $160.07 for two nights.

We stayed in two hotels after we left Longmont as we headed to Rocky Mountain National Park and Steamboat Springs. It was still very busy in these areas and many hotels were booked. For two nights, it cost us $228.24.

The last two nights in Colorado were spent in a small camping cabin at Elk Creek Campground in Grand Lake, near Rocky Mountain National Park. It was getting down in the 30’s at night and we enjoyed trying out these cabins! They had 3 beds, a small table, and electric heat 😉 They were a great way to camp – but still save some money! The total for two nights was $131.10.

Results – We spent $310.17 more than we estimated! I never thought the night time temperatures would be that different between Longmont and Grand Lake. It makes sense now though! We even saw snow the morning we were headed to Steamboat! We definitely could have tent-camped in those colder temperatures, but we also wanted to try out the camping cabins. The AirBNB was not part of the original plan, but we also didn’t plan on going to the Bronco’s game! We could have camped those nights too, but we were happy to spend the extra money for the convenience (and extra sleep!)

I’ll need to figure out a better way to break this out in future trips. The $497.02 figure was most of what we ate and drank out during the trip. We stopped at a couple of grocery stores and at a big box store to get supplies twice too. The total for grocery/supplies was $200.72 and some of that was food and beverages. I didn’t take the time to break out the totals – so I combined these categories.

Results – We spent $302.26 less than what we estimated in these two areas. This is interesting because I had predicted that food/beverage would be our largest expense! We didn’t need a cooler and we didn’t have any way to cook, so we definitely did well in this category! We kept things simple and we ate out almost every night. We did save a lot by using groceries for breakfast and lunch, rather than going out to eat those meals each day.

*One other IMPORTANT note! We were treated to two nice dinners on our trip too! Our new friend Carol who just started the blog Downsize Your 2080 (focusing on designing a lifestyle around a part-time work schedule) and her friend Sue treated us to dinner in Longmont. And we met up with a PopUp “classmate” and her family in Steamboat Springs where they live. They treated us to a great dinner and some margaritas too! We were SO lucky to have met such nice people! We are looking forward to seeing these folks again in the future and we’ll be the ones to do the treating!

Activities

Estimate – $300

Actual – $600

We were really just guessing what activities might cost. But we were also sure that if we found fun things to do, that cost wasn’t going to prevent us from doing them! I turned 50 this year, we had an anniversary this spring, and my husband had a birthday this summer – and we didn’t do anything “big” to celebrate those important days. We were really busy getting our house ready to be sold and getting both kids ready for college – and we knew our days to travel were coming.

We gave $10 to the band that came to MMM’s HQ the first week we were there. We spent $42 to rent sleds to use at Great Sand Dune National Park. We purchased a one-year National Park’s Pass for $80 (that we can use until 9/2018). We spent $14 on campfire wood and starters. And we took a $50 gondola ride to the top of Steamboat Mountain.

We also spent $404 on Monday Night Football tickets! We had planned on going to a Colorado Rockies baseball game – but the football game was great! Being able to hang out with four new friends (two from the United Kingdom) was so much fun and something we’ll always remember. We got seats near the field so that we could see all of the action and let our UK friends enjoy their first football game! We’ve only been to one other game in the last ten years, so this was definitely a treat for us too!

Result – We spent $300 more than we had guessed! And we’d do the same thing again if we had the chance!

So how did we do overall?

Total Estimate for the Trip – $2000 (avg. $125/day for two of us)

Total for the Trip – $2413.58 (avg. $151/day for two of us)

Result – We spent $413.58 MORE than we estimated over the 16 days (avg $26 more /day for two of us)

I think we did pretty well for estimating and having a pretty “open” schedule outside of the time we spent in Longmont.

Were there areas where we could have been more frugal? Sure. We could have saved some UR points by flying early in the morning and renting a smaller car instead of a minivan. We could have saved on gas by not going on the long trips away from Longmont. We could have skipped the AirBNB and the camping cabins and tent-camped more. We could have skipped the craft beer when we ate out. And we could have made sandwiches instead of eating out a few nights too.

We could have climbed the dunes and skipped sledding down them. We could have paid for a one-day pass instead of the annual National Park Pass. We could have looked at Steamboat Mountain and skipped the Gondola ride and hiking at the top. And we could have watched the Bronco’s game at a bar and not from the 30th row from the field.

But we made the choice to spend money on what made us happy and we’re SO glad we did. When you’re pretty frugal most of the time, it can be hard to spend more freely. We think we found a good balance on this trip and made smart decisions about where to spend and where to be more frugal.

We can definitely see the benefits of estimating and tracking expenses (although I found the tracking to be challenging while we were on the trip.) For our next trip, I will try to estimate the expenses and then I’ll add an extra 15-20% to see if I can get a more accurate total. And I’ll look for some apps to help track things too!

If you didn’t see my two recent posts, check out my Week 1 and Week 2 reviews of PopUp Business School, MMM’s HQ, and what we did during our free time!

How do you decide what to spend money on when you are on vacation? Are you pretty good at estimating expenses or does your budget get busted when you go away? Which categories do you tend to overspend in? If you have any suggestions on how to keep track of expenses while on the road, share away!

Four months ago, I shared a post discussing how we chose our new Nexus 6 phones and the beginning of our experiment between Project Fi and Republic Wireless. We chose the type of phone we wanted before considering cell service providers. We knew that an unlocked Nexus phone with the features we wanted could be moved to a variety of low-cost GSM or CDMA carriers (or MNVO’s – mobile virtual network operators.)

We gave up the big name cell carriers about six years ago – the same time we cut out cable TV and found our “tribe” in the personal finance community.

Before I go on to the results of the experiment, I just wanted to share some feedback on the phones we chose. My husband and I got the same (new) phone – the Nexus 6 for $219 each at Overstock.com (currently selling for $329 on Amazon!) We love our new phones and our aging eyes appreciate those 6 inch screens! We haven’t found them to be that difficult to carry or hold and the trade off on the viewing experience has been totally worth it.

They are discontinued models though and I wrote that I thought we’d be fine with this model in the original post. And I think we are…but there is a chance it may have impacted our MNVO experiment – so on to the results!

Before we started the experiment, we were both using Airvoice Wireless (an AT&T MNVO) and we were happy with their service and our cell coverage. We were using very little data on our phones, so we were able to use their $20 plan (including taxes/fees). We also had a hotspot with 2GB of data so we could use that with our phones, and I could use my laptop in the car when we traveled. But since I went back to work full-time again last summer – (that one more year syndrome), we decided to drop the hotspot since our travel plans changed.

After dropping the hotspot, we decided that we could probably switch carriers and get more data at a cheaper price for the new phones we wanted. We’ve changed carriers before and even though it is a bit of a hassle, it isn’t hard to do (and we were always able to keep our phone numbers.) This is when we decided to give two different carriers a try to see which one we preferred. I chose to go with Google’s Project Fi and we set my husband up with Republic Wireless.

Features of Fi Not Used Yet: international use, extra purchase of $10/GB data, adding family members at a lower rate

I’ve only had two negative experiences in the four months I’ve been using Project Fi. The first is having data on at all times in order to be able to get calls. On the other MNVO’s I’ve used, I could turn the data off and still get calls. This hasn’t been a big issue though. The other issue was my inability to get calls at work because of a poor cell signal and a weak wi-fi signal. I requested a call from a Fi representative and they stayed on the phone with me until the problem was resolved. (They ended up switching the network my calls were being routed to.)

I am still with Project Fi at this point. I have been happy with their service and I think there are a number of benefits to using this MNVO. The ability to use my phone as a hotspot is still important to me and good customer service is even more important. I am not thrilled with the price though, specifically the taxes. For now, I think Fi is a reasonable cell service to consider – especially if their features meet many of your needs.

He only had one negative experience in the four months he used Republic Wireless. But it was a big enough negative that he dropped RW service in May. Everything had been going really well until one day when his phone wouldn’t make outgoing calls. He could text and get calls, but he couldn’t make calls unless he was on wi-fi. And a day later, he couldn’t make calls at all.

In my original post for this experiment, I made the comment, “we haven’t needed RW customer service -which we’ve heard can be a real challenge.” And that became the big problem…the lack of quality (and timely) customer service. (RW has since addressed their Customer Service issues with MANY improvements! We are BACK ON RW now! SEE WHY HERE.)

We understand that when you use MNVO’s you pay less than the big carriers and may experience some issues. RW has a strong and helpful community forum and customer service via email – but you can’t call and talk to anyone when you are having a big problem. (Of course he would have had to borrow a phone to call them if it was an option because his phone couldn’t make calls!)

I posted the problem in the community forum for him and we tried everything that was suggested. I put in a help ticket too. And it took overnight to get a response. We did what the email support suggested and wrote them back because the phone still didn’t work. And then we didn’t hear anything again for 6 or 7 hours. Another email with suggestions and we emailed them right back when they didn’t work. After a delayed response again, another day went by.

After not having a functional phone for 3 days (when we were on the road traveling), we decided that RW’s days were likely numbered. We got another email that said that we would need to do a hard reset of his phone to see if that would solve the problem. And that was the final straw. He wasn’t going to lose everything on his phone (or try to back it all up) to stick with RW. We had an extra AirVoice Wireless SIM and started the porting process back to AirVoice.

We are not sure what the problem was with RW. I used RW back in 2014 and I was very happy with the service. My husband was very happy up until mid-May too. I am wondering if this had something to do with our discontinued phone model and some kind of update, but RW support didn’t mention that was the problem either. We are too busy with our properties right now for my husband to have a phone that isn’t functioning properly.

What’s really interesting is that I had just ordered an RW SIM card myself. I had decided to switch from Project Fi to Republic Wireless based on how the experiment was going and to save more money!

When I finish work next Friday (one more week!!), I am going to re-visit some other options and I’ll keep you updated if I change cell carriers again. It’s great to have the freedom to shop around! I think that Republic Wireless and Project Fi are good options based on your needs and the features that are offered. Just know that customer service can be an issue at RW, even though they do have support options. They are very reasonably priced, but this is a trade-off you need to keep in mind.

After reviewing the AirVoice website again, I think it could be a top contender but I couldn’t use my phone as a hotspot then ☹ That is the only real negative. AirVoice runs on AT&T towers which have very good coverage here. We are also looking at this Sprint option (that ends June 30th.) We have phones that meet the criteria and to get a (mostly) free year of unlimited everything with no contract would be awesome! Prices would go up in year two if we chose to stay with them. But if Sprint meets our needs (including other family members), switching again might be a really smart decision!

Have you tried an MNVO and been unhappy? Is there an MNVO that you love? Anyone else going to look into that Sprint special? Our kids are using Straight Talk (using the Verizon towers). They have some really negative reviews but we haven’t had any trouble at all in the last 5 years! It’s all about what you need, your expectations, and your wallet! Thanks for reading!

Like this:

I made the decision to leave my full-time job last spring. As much as I enjoyed teaching at the college level, my husband and I finally accepted that we had enough. We are Financially Independent and it was my chance to stop reading about FIRE and actually Retire Early. And defining what your early retirement will look like is the beauty of being FIRE’d. So why am I writing a post about one more year syndrome?

My plan was to retire from full-time work, not all work. My husband is retired and works about 5-10 hours a week on our rental properties. And 5-10 hours per week of online teaching was still in my plan. I still have five years to go before I can collect my pension. Online teaching counts as service credit and I need to earn 3 more years of credit to reach my maximum pension level. It would be crazy to give up online teaching at this point in time! $15,000 a year for the rest of my life crazy!

Downshifting was an easy transition last spring. We had plenty of things planned for the extra hours available each day! But two months into earlyretirement, my plan was challenged. A former colleague called and offered me an interim two-month administrative position and I accepted.

And that decision brought on a case of OMY – one more year syndrome.

Two-months has quickly turned into a year. Paychecks are rolling in and a boost in my service credit and final average salary for my pension are on target. And my son is finishing up high school.

It’s been a very normal year.

We’ve also paid off a rental property, visited our vacation condo and padded the kids’ college accounts. Even though the extra money I’m earning isn’t necessary, it has been really nice. And I’m afraid I might miss it. So why not work just one more year?

And that’s how it happens. Just OMY….

I started calculating my salary, service credit and the impact on my pension for working one more year. We could pay off another rental property. And if I lived to be 85 – that one year of work would be worth about $200,000.

A flexible, location independent lifestyle wasn’t that important last spring because my son was still going to be in high school. Since he will be heading off to college this fall, I needed to rethink my goals for next year.

Here are my new end goals (changes in bold)– ranked by importance:

Maximize My Health/Wellness – Extremely Important (EI)

Create a Flexible, Location Independent Lifestyle – Very Important (VI)

Commit to Grow/Strengthen Relationships – Important (I)

Continue Personal Growth – Important (I)

Increase Wealth – Somewhat Important (I) *meeting financial obligations is a given

Once I revisited my goals, the decision was clear. And I didn’t even need to create a new decision-matrix to prove it to myself. One more year of full-time work was not going to allow for the flexible, location independent lifestylemy husband and I really want. And that is very important to us now – even more important to us than increasing our wealth.

I’m cured of OMY syndrome.

But I also want to share four key things we learned and came to terms with this year too. Learning and helping others are both habits I am really focused on building this year! Hopefully this deeper thinking and sharing will help prevent my OMY syndrome from returning!

Kids – Well, they aren’t kids anymore. All of our children are technically, adults. Our jobs as parents will never end, but our roles are shifting too. It’s not easy, but we are working to embrace that shift and focus on our needs and wants – in addition to theirs.

Work – I have no plan to work full-time again, but I know I will work. And I get job offers every week. But I’ll be very selective now too. I can also try out some new ideas of my own that may generate some income. I’m embracing the upside of having a lot more time in my future!

Time – Between the two of us, we’ve been on more than 100 trips around the sun… And the older we get, the faster those trips seem to feel! Simply put, we’re not getting any younger.

Health – We are thankful for our health and we work hard to keep ourselves healthy too! But we know our health can change at any minute. We went on vacation last month and came home to learn our neighbor had died suddenly. He was 64 and planned to retire next month. We are not going to live in fear of dying, but at this point in our lives…we go to more funerals than weddings.

OMY syndrome is very real for some people – and I experienced it this year. And I can easily see how one more year could turn into five or ten more years too… Without a clear plan and revisiting your end goals often, “normal” gets real comfortable. And days of work can turn into years of work before you know it.

We think we’re making a smart decision that will “stick” this time! Hopefully the effort we’ve put in reflecting on and revisiting our end goals will maximize our satisfaction with this decision, while minimizing regrets.

Next week, I’ll explain the financial part of our retirement plan with some fun charts and graphs. I clearly need more time learning how to make them – but I am having fun learning how to do that too! We have a gap to fill for the next five years if we want to make good use of our time! Stop by and check out our plan! And as always, thanks for reading.

I readily admit that I am a digital immigrant. And even though I use technology all day long, I am really only comfortable searching for websites or articles and using some basic office programs. I can do a lot of other things with technology, but nothing comes naturally. And I made a really smart decision to start this blog when my digital native daughter was home from college to serve as my total tech support system.

I also use a $300 laptop and I don’t own an Ipad or other device. And even though I teach online high school and college classes, write a blog, run two businesses from home and keep all of our books (our rental home business and an educational consulting business) – my cheap laptop and $50 smartphone are all I use. And it’s worked pretty well up to this point…

Today I want to just focus on smartphones though. And it’s funny because as I was reading some great blog posts this week, I noticed that Emily over at JohnJaneDoe.com was discussing the cost of “good enough” smartphones. It’s always interesting to discuss frugal vs. cheap for decisions like this too.

I am most interested in finding out if there are ways to save money and time with a phone. I don’t need a fancy one, but I want to be more efficient with my phone use. I also want to find out if there are ways you use your phone to save money.

But before we start talking about phones, it’s important to consider that there are often competing goals that come in to play in this kind of decision. Is the phone itself the most important thing? And what features are really necessary? Or is the carrier most important? Maybe it’s the amount of data or the ability to use the phone internationally that is most important to you?

And of course there’s the cost… and if you are here reading this, that likely matters a lot to you too.

If you’re confused by all the different things that seem important, the competing goals are likely to blame. It will be important to sort those out before you make a decision, or it may be one you come to regret.

Right now I have a Noika Lumia Windows-based phone and I use AirVoice Wireless (an AT & T MNVO) as my carrier. To make a smart decision about whether to upgrade my phone, I need to consider my goals (needs). Then I’ll rank those goals from most to least important to eliminate the “competition” between them. Different phones (including my current phone) can then be compared to my goals to determine the best phone option.

Figuring out some specific goals (needs) is where I could use some help!

I think I want a screen that is larger than 4 inches. I never wore glasses on a regular basis until a few years ago, and now it seems like I can’t see anything without them. I’m hoping a bigger screen will make texting and reading easier. But what is too big? I don’t want to carry around a tablet-sized phone either (or do I)??

And I know I want a phone that is durable (or that I can use a really good case on). I haven’t really had any problems with my phone and I’ve dropped it many times.

We also plan on doing a lot of traveling in the future so the camera is really important too. But what kind of camera is good enough?

I am also stuck using the Microsoft Store for apps and that is pretty limiting. I don’t use many apps (OK – like 2…) but I’m sure there are others I would like and use. Are there apps you use that help save you time? What about saving money? I would love to hear any ideas you might have about that!

I know Emily mentioned the amount of memory is an issue for her too. I don’t even know how much memory my phone has, but I use it for so few things that it hardly matters! But that will change if I start taking more pictures and using more apps – so if you know what works (or hasn’t worked!) for you – share away!

And then there is the battle of Iphone or Android… (I’m not thinking anyone will suggest a different Windows phone!)

The carrier and plan are something I will consider after I figure out if I even need a new phone to meet my goals. For my situation, the phone decision comes first. And if I decide a new phone would help me, I plan to buy one outright – so I won’t be tied to any kind of contract.

After I gather more information and determine my specific goals and their importance, I plan to do a follow-up decision analysis on choosing a phone and on a few different carriers and plans. If you have any you would like me to consider, just let me know in the comments!

Maybe the “status quo” will be all I need and that is fine with me. But time is worth a lot to me right now and I’m willing to spend some money to meet my goals.

So readers – are you an Android or IPhone user? What features/apps on your phone can’t you live without? How could a more functional smartphone save me time? What about money? Are there apps that I could be using or functions of a better phone that would help re-coup some of the costs of a new phone? What about the memory issue? Anything else I should consider as I create and rank my list of needs?

When I started this post the original title was “Hiring Out Your Pool Maintenance? Why DIY is definitely a Smarter Decision!” If you read the title carefully – you’ll see that I’ve changed my mind a bit on this now! And this change of heart has only happened because I am consciously trying to be careful to recognize my biases. And although this example is about pools, it can be transferred to other DIY projects too!

I have always been around people who are pretty self-sufficient. My parents had rental properties from the time I was very young and up until the last few years, they always managed the units and performed the majority of the maintenance. Even though the DIY “label” was not around back then, clearly the role models I had were hard working parents who figured out what they didn’t know how to do – without the help of the Internet or YouTube.

I’m sure most of their DIY efforts were to save money, but they also learned a tremendous amount along the way. My siblings and I also own rental properties and with a few exceptions, we have followed in their path by completing much of the property upkeep and maintenance on our own. (My husband gets the HUGE majority of credit on the upkeep of our properties though!)

But in an effort to try to always keep learning and to look at decision-making in a broader sense, I have identified my own clear bias toward DIY. And as I started outlining the original post, my bias became evident when I didn’t even have prices of hiring out pool maintenance to back up the title!

But the cost of hiring someone to maintain your pool must be incredibly high – right? Pool companies need to make money while they can, especially in an area where the season is so short. I didn’t think there was any way that a pool company could be less expensive than DIY pool maintenance. And I was right – but I still changed the title of the post. Let’s look into this a little more…

We have gone to a local pool company a few times to get supplies or parts when we don’t have time to order them. The owners are great to work with and based on conversations with others and reviews online, the company has a very good reputation. I called them and asked questions about the costs related to opening/closing and maintaining an in-ground pool for our typical season (Memorial Day-Labor Day).

The numbers were “ballpark” figures – but that was all I needed to make some comparisons to our DIY pool maintenance costs. Here is the breakdown of costs if we would hire out the maintenance:

1) Opening/Closing (includes chemicals and sand for filter) – $500 *this is specific to our winter safety pool cover (the one on ads that holds up an elephant – it’s pretty amazing!)

2) Weekly pool vacuuming & addition of chemicals/balancing of chemicals – $60/week + cost of chemicals. We estimate about 15 weeks of use. 15 x $60 = $900 and the pool store owner estimated the cost of chemicals to be approximately $500 for the season.

With tax and some rounding up (always round up!) – we can estimate a minimum of $2000 for pool maintenance for the season (or about $133/week…)

This does not include any problems with the pool – (such as pump or pool liner issues), and it doesn’t include water or electricity costs either. This is just the basic pool maintenance. (In an upcoming post, I will detail more of the costs related to our pool to give you a better sense of total actual costs.)

So how much does it cost us for our DIY pool maintenance? We estimate the cost of the chemicals, chemical testing kit, and sand for the filter for the year to be between $550-600 (and we always estimate high!) We don’t have any costs for opening and closing – other than the time it takes us to do the work involved. And it takes about 12-14 hours of work total to open and close the pool (including the initial vacuuming/skimming and setting up/taking apart the filter). We should also include the time it takes my husband to vacuum each week and for me to do the chemical testing. This would be about 1 hour a week or 15 total hours.

But my husband is retired (other than taking care of our rental properties) and I only work part-time for the most part now. Does that affect what our time is worth?

Let’s just use a value of $25/hour for this example. With 29 total hours of pool maintenance x $25/hour= $725 “labor cost” to DIY pool maintenance.

So the total cost for DIY pool maintenance if we round up (and include our “labor” costs) would be about $1,325. This is a $675 savings per season over hiring the job out. And without considering the value of our time, the maintenance costs would be about $600. This would result in an annual savings of about $1400.

What do you think? Is it worth saving $45-90 per week ($600-$1400 total depending on how you look at it) to have to doall the work yourself?

Only you could decide that answer!

Some people would hate spending that much extra money each week for a job they think they could do (or learn to do) themselves.

And when we thought about things like getting groceries, cooking, going to kids’ games, running errands, mowing the lawn, and trying to get in some exercise ourselves – the thought of vacuuming and maintaining the pool this week became just one more thing to fit in a busy schedule.

What we decided was that if we were working full-time all summer – it might be totally worth the money to pay someone to open, maintain, and close our pool!

And that’s when I decided to change the name of the post.

It’s also really important to point out that if you don’t really know what you are doing with a pool in terms of the chemicals and keeping it clean, you may even SAVE MONEY by hiring the job out. Pools that are not very carefully maintained can easily turn into green swamps for many reasons! (Just think about those green pools you saw in Rio during the Olympics…)

And if you have a really busy schedule, you might just end up running back and forth to the pool store to get water tested and to purchase chemicals – and all the money you “saved” from DIY might be lost (and more…) along with a lot of your precious time off!

So here are the key pointsand questions from this post that you should consider in terms of DIY or hiring jobs out:

Know your biases and be open to other options. And make some calls to cost out your options before dismissing them as “too expensive”.

Can you do the project safely and efficiently? (We don’t DIY most electric issues or maintenance/repair of any roof.)

Have clear goals. If your extremely important (EI) goal is to minimize spending, then DIY projects might make more sense. If spending time with your family is most important, then you might choose to hire jobs out.

Consider the time needed to learn about the job or project BEFORE you start doing it.

Remember that “learning as you go” can cost you both time and money!

Are you a DIY’er or do you hire a lot of jobs out? Do you use any kind of criteria to decide? Have you done DIY projects or jobs that really weren’t worth your time and effort? Would you put a dollar value on your time if you were retired? How much would your time be worth?

Disclaimer

Note: Ideas and opinions on MakeSmarterDecisions.com are simply the results of my own experiences, and they are not intended to advise or offend. MakeSmarterDecisions.com should be viewed and shared for educational and entertainment purposes only. My posts are based on my personal experiences, and all readers should consider consulting a professional or specialist in a given area (financial, retirement, real estate, etc.) before making any decisions.
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